Mitt Romney has had five or six years to formulate his response to a full onslaught on his record as corporate efficiency dweeb at Bain Capital, and here's what he's come up with: YOU PEOPLE ARE JEALOUS. Stop it. Go away!

Matt Lauer, in a fine line of questioning yesterday, pressed Romney on the way he's started labeling attacks on his record at Bain as based on "envy." That is strange, isn't it, that instead of trying to explain his role in financial capitalism as good for the American worker in the long-term — a tough job, but his only real way out of this! — he's just resorted to dismissing people as jealous that he cleaned up so well and gets to boil a steak for breakfast everyday.

And when asked about whether questioning an economic system that's radically redistributed income to the very top thanks to the ascension of financial gimmickry above all else might be a worthy national conversation, he responds that these things may deserve a few minutes of idle chatter in "quiet rooms," while tweaking the tax code, but not on the campaign trail.

Is this really the argument he's going with? Most people who are concerned about income inequality trends — which is "most people," in general — aren't coming from a place of, Mitt Romney got to be a financial middleman who maximized profits for his investors by squeezing the companies he bought, why can't I! It's more that they question the value of a system that gives such people an escalator ride to the tippy-top of the income scale while doing little for, or perhaps actively suppressing, everybody else.